Interior Department Is OK With Killing Off Endangered Red Wolves

Wildlife Service Wants to Drastically Shrink Their Tiny Habitat, Let Hunters and Farmers Shoot If They Stray

By Sarah Okeson

Trump’s Fish and Wildlife Service is working to kill off the three dozen or so struggling red wolves that remain in the wild by shrinking their territory in eastern North Carolina to about 12% of the 1.7 million acres they now have and letting landowners slaughter wolves if they cross the boundaries.

A proposal backed by James Kurth, the deputy director of the service, says a single pack or two, perhaps fewer than 15 animals, could remain on the 152,000 acres of the Alligator National Wildlife Refuge and the 46,619 acres of the Dare County Bombing Range.

People would be able to kill the wolves when they stray outside the allowed areas and would only be required to notify the Fish and Wildlife Service within 24 hours and to return any collars the wolves were wearing.

Action Box/What You Can Do About It

Rarer than Bengal tigers or giant pandas.

Comment online or mail comments to Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS-R4-ES-2018-0035, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: BPHC, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803. Comments must be received by July 30.

A public information session will be held from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. July 10 and a public hearing from 7 to 9 p.m. July 10 at Roanoke Festival Park, One Festival Park, Manteo, NC 27954.

Call James Kurth, the deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, at 202-208-4717 to tell him to protect red wolves.

North Carolina’s junior senator, Thom Tillis, a Republican, has tried to have the animals, declared extinct in the wild in 1980, pronounced extinct for the second time.

“I think it makes the most sense to shut the program down to figure out how to do it right and build some credibility with the landowners,” Tillis said in 2016.

The animals, which weigh 45 to 80 pounds as adults, are notoriously shy. They eat deer, rats, rabbits and other animals. Red wolves were one of the first animals listed under the Endangered Species Act and reintroduced in North Carolina after a breeding program in zoos.

The current red wolf habitat is a tiny fraction of its historic range. Click to enlarge.

A 2014 review of federal recovery efforts by the Wildlife Management Institute found not enough oversight and support. Much of the program’s $1.3 million in annual expenses was spent on sterilizing area coyotes to try to prevent them from breeding with red wolves.

About 200 red wolves are in zoos, and if efforts to protect them in the wild are essentially abandoned their future will be as caged animals.